Medieval Chinese Warfare, 300-900, David A. Graff (Routledge, 2002). I have a secret confession to make. Late at night, when Mrs. Psmith and the Psmithlets are all tucked away in their beds, I like to stay up in my study and fantasize about…the end of the world. But not just any end of the world, because most apocalypses are very boring. For example: “AI unleashes killer nanobots that turn everybody into paperclips.” Yawn. How dull. Where’s the drama in that? No, like all disordered fantasies, mine are fun, and ever-so-conveniently constructed to push the bounds of plausibility while still being technically possible. I’m mostly fantasizing about apocalypses where
The earliest iteration of the biggest western MMO, World of Warcraft, splits the difference on the whole chosen one thing. You and thirty nine other players are needed to kill the biggest bad guys, and you get flavor text(that most don't read) saying "Good job hero!", possibly acknowledging that it was a group effort.
Then in later versions you become an extremely consequential supporting character to the writers' pet heroes. A lot of players prefer old school WoW. One reason, even though most don't realize it, is that the awful storytelling of WoW is mostly in the background in the initial version of the game (with less terrible voice acting). Instead, it really is about the "World".
The links to Western civilisation collapsing once, twice, three times don't work for me; possibly because I'm outside the USA? You've piqued my curiosity.
The earliest iteration of the biggest western MMO, World of Warcraft, splits the difference on the whole chosen one thing. You and thirty nine other players are needed to kill the biggest bad guys, and you get flavor text(that most don't read) saying "Good job hero!", possibly acknowledging that it was a group effort.
Then in later versions you become an extremely consequential supporting character to the writers' pet heroes. A lot of players prefer old school WoW. One reason, even though most don't realize it, is that the awful storytelling of WoW is mostly in the background in the initial version of the game (with less terrible voice acting). Instead, it really is about the "World".
The links to Western civilisation collapsing once, twice, three times don't work for me; possibly because I'm outside the USA? You've piqued my curiosity.
Weird! They link, in order, to: Gibbon's Decline and Fall; Eric Cline's 1177 BC; Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue.
"Making all things correspond to what they should"--is there anything more Chinese than that?
This phrasing is also extremely Egyptian (as in Pharaonic Ancient Egypt).